'Speaking scars': The tattoo in popular practice and medico-legal debate in nineteenth-century Europe

History Workshop Journal

Volumn 44, Issue 1, 1997, Pages 106-142

  Caplan, Jane ^a  

^a NONE

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

ARTICLE; CRIME; EUROPE; FORENSIC MEDICINE; HISTORY; HOMICIDE; SCAR; THERAPY;

CICATRIX; CRIME; EUROPE; FORENSIC MEDICINE; HISTORY, 19TH CENTURY; HOMICIDE; THERAPEUTICS;

EID: 0031231125     PISSN: 13633554     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1093/hwj/1997.44.107     Document Type: Review

References (273)

1. Johann Ludwig Casper, 'Über Tätowirungen. Eine neue gerichtlich-medicinische Frage', Vierteljahrsschrift für gerichtliche und öffentliche Medizin, 1, 1852, pp. 274-92;
2. quotations below are from this article. See also his Praktisches Handbuch der gerichtlichen Medicin, vol. 1, Berlin, 1857,
3. 'Handbuch der gerichtlich-medicinischen Leichen-Diagnostik', pp. 115-20.
4. Johann Ludwig Casper (1796-1864), trained in Halle and Berlin, was a leading figure in the development of pathology and forensic medicine in Prussia, especially in securing for the latter the status of an independent medical specialism.
5. An earlier case involving uncertain tattoos occurred in the 1840s, but was not reported until 1855: see Ambroise Tardieu, 'Étude médico-légale sur le tatouage, considéré comme signe d'identité', Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale, 2nd. ser., 2, 1855, pp. 171-206.
6. On marriage certificates: Olive Anderson, 'The Incidence of Civil Marriage in England and Wales', Past & Present, 69, November 1975, pp. 50-87;
7. on Jewish naming practices, Dietz Bering, The Stigma of Names. Antisemitism in German Daily Life, 1812-1933, Cambridge, 1992;
8. on identities in Paris, Alan Sekula, 'The Body and the Archive', October, 39, Winter 1986, pp. 33ff.,
9. and Donald E. English, Political Uses of Photography in the Third French Republic 1871-1914, Ann Arbor, 1981, ch. 2.
10. Adolf Spamer, Die Tätowierung in den deutschen Hafenstädten, Bremen, 1934 (reprint Munich, 1994), claims that there were eighteenth-century studies of local German customs, but gives no references, nor have I found any so far.
11. See especially Clinton R. Sanders, Customizing the Body. The Art and Culture of Tattooing, Philadelphia, 1989;
12. Arnold Rubin (ed.), Marks of Civilization. Artistic Transformations of the Human Body, Los Angeles, 1988;
13. V. Vale and A. Juno (eds), Re/Search # 12: Modern Primitives: Tattoo, Piercing, Scarification. An Investigation of Contemporary Adornment and Ritual, San Francisco, 1989;
14. Pierced Hearts and True Love. A Century of Drawings and Images, New York/Honolulu, 1995;
15. Leonard St. Clair and Alan B. Govenar, Stoney Knows How. Life as a Tattoo Artist, Lexington, Ky., 1981;
16. Donald Edward Hardy (ed.), Sailor Jerry Collins. American Tattoo Master, Honolulu, 1994.
17. More popular illustrated treatments include Stefan Richter, Tattoo, London, 1988;
18. Chris Wroblewski, Skin Shows, 4 vols., London 1989-95;
19. Jeff Jaguer, The Tattoo. A Pictorial History, Horndean, 1990;
20. Michelle Delio, Tattoo. The Exotic Art of Skin Decoration, London, 1994.
21. Brief historical accounts and anecdotes appear in most of the popular contemporary publications on tattooing, but scholarly histories are rare. Stefan Oettermann, Zeichen auf der Haut. Die Geschichte der Tätowierung in Europa, Hamburg, 1994 (first edn 1979), is outstanding;
22. in English, see Ronald Scutt and Christopher Gotch, Art, Sex and Symbol. The Mystery of Tattooing, London, 1986;
23. also Jean Graven, L'argot et le tatouage des criminels, Neuchâtel, 1962.
24. See also historical discussions in Henry Field, Body-Marking in South-Western Asia, Cambridge, Mass., 1958;
25. Sanders, Customizing the Body;
26. Rubin (ed), Marks of Civilization;
27. Alfred Gell, Wrapping in Images. Tattooing in Polynesia, Oxford, 1993;
28. Jean-Thierry Maertens, Le dessein sur la peau. Essai d'anthropologie des inscriptions tégumentaires, Paris, 1978.
29. Earlier research includes Ernest Berchon, Histoire médicale du tatouage, Paris, 1869;
30. Alexandre Lacassagne, Les tatouages. Étude anthropologique et médico-légale, Paris, 1881;
31. A. Lacassagne and E. Magitot, 'Tatouage', in A. Dechambre and L. Lereboulet (eds), Dictionnaire encyclopédique des sciences médicales, 3rd. ser., 16, Paris, 1886, pp. 96-160;
32. Wilhelm Joest, Tätowiren, Narbenzeichen und Körperbemalen. Ein Beitrag zur vergleichenden Ethnologie, Berlin, 1887;
33. A. T. Sinclair, 'Tattooing - Oriental and Gypsy', American Anthropologist, N.S., 10, 1908, pp. 361-86;
34. Otto Lauffer, 'Über die Geschichte und den heutigen volkstümlichen Gebrauch der Tätowierung in Deutschland', Wörter und Sachen, vol. 6, 1914/15, pp. 1-14;
35. Paul Cattani, Das Tatauieren. Eine monographische Darstellung vom psychologischen, ethnologischen, medizinischen, gerichtlichmedizinischen, biologischen, histologischen und therapeutischen Standpunkt aus, Basel, 1922;
36. Erhard Riecke, Das Tatauierungswesen im heutigen Europa, Jena, 1925;
37. W. D. Hambly, The History of Tattooing and Its Significance, London, 1925;
38. Spamer, Die Tätowierung. The following account draws from these sources; additional references are cited in footnotes.
39. Emblematic is the view of a Danish physician writing in 1891: 'The largest part of the world seems to have been gradually occupied by the white races; the natives of the lowest races will die out or be absorbed, and thus tattooing, at least in its proper decorative form, will disappear; civilization [Kultur] and tattooing are incompatible . . . What is remarkable is the minimal extent to which this custom in general seems to have existed among the gifted and precociously developed aryan race, as also the fact that it essentially disappeared at an early stage. The Sanskrit languages have no term for tattooing' (R. Bergh, 'Über Tätowierung der Prostituierten', Monatshefte für praktische Dermatologie, 12: 5, March 1891, pp. 206-7).
40. Lombroso regarded the practice of tattooing among northern Italians as the anomalous survival of a primitive Celtic custom: Cesare Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente, Turin, 1889, 4th edn, vol. 2, pp. 289, 294.
41. For the question of continuity, see Juliet Fleming, 'The Renaissance Tattoo', RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics, May, 1997 (I am grateful to the author for letting me read this essay before publication).
42. Gell, Wrapping in Images, is a brilliant introduction to this question.
43. Sanders, Customizing the Body, p. 6.
44. Rubin, ed., Marks of Civilization, p. 16.
45. Didier Anzieu, The Skin-Ego. A Psychoanalytic Approach to the Self, New Haven, 1989, p. 40.
46. Gell, Wrapping in Images, pp. 38, 39.
47. Gell, Wrapping in Images, Ibid., p. 315; see also the subtle interpretation in Maertens, Le dessein sur la peau.
48. Michel Foucault, Discipline and Punish. The Birth of the Prison, Harmondsworth, 1991, p. 25.
49. See C. P. Jones, 'Stigma: Tattooing and Branding in Graeco-Roman Antiquity', Journal of Roman Studies, 77, 1987, pp. 139-55;
50. and Alexandre Lacassagne, 'La signification des tatouages chez les peuples primitifs et dans les civilisations méditerranéennes'. Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 27, 1912, pp. 783-810.
51. The classic passage is Leviticus, xix. 28;
52. and see Edmond Locard, 'Le tatouage chez les Hébreux', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 24, 1909, pp. 56-62.
53. See Scutt and Gotch, Art, Sex and Symbol, pp. 162-3
54. (where it is also claimed (p. 26) that Roman soldiers picked up the habit of tattooing from their Celtic and Germanic neighbours); Oettermann, Zeichen auf der Haut, pp. 104-9.
55. Jones, Stigma, p. 149.
56. See for example the descriptions in Voyage de M'de Thevenot au Levant, Paris, 1689, pp. 638-9,
57. and Henry Maundrell, A Journey from Aleppo to Jerusalem at Easter A.D. 1687, Oxford, 1703, pp. 73-4;
58. further evidence in Fleming, 'The Renaissance Tattoo'.
59. On Bosnian Catholics, see Edith Durham, Some Tribal Origins, Laws and Customs of the Balkans, London, 1928, Sect. III;
60. also Leopold Gluck, 'Die Tätowirung der Haut bei den Katholiken Bosniens und der Hercegovina', Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen aus Bosnien und Hercegovina [Vienna], 2, 1894, pp. 455-62;
61. Ciro Truhelka, 'Die Tätowirung bei den Katholiken Bosniens und der Hercegovina', Wissenschaftliche Mittheilungen aus Bosnien und Hercegovina, 4, 1896, pp. 493-508;
62. Albert Hellwig, 'Tätowierung infolge eines Gelübdes', Archiv für Kriminalanthropologie und Kriminalistik, 31, 1908, pp. 321-2.
63. On pilgrims to Loreto, see Catherine Pigorini-Beri, 'Le tatouage religieux et amoureux au pèlerinage de N.D. de Lorette', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 16, 1891, pp. 5-16;
64. on Copts in Jerusalem, John Carswell, Coptic Tattoo Designs, Beirut, 1958: some of the designs depicted here had been in use for centuries.
65. Sinclair, 'Tattooing - Oriental and Gypsy', p. 362, discusses the merger of the terms for 'pilgrim' and 'tattoo' in Armenian and some other languages.
66. Pigorini-Beri, 'Le tatouage religieux', p. 10;
67. see also Maertens, Le dessein sur la peau, pp. 95-105.
68. Oettermann, Zeichen auf der Haut, p. 20;
69. see also Herbert Bellmann, 'Die Tatauierung', in W. Pessler (ed.), Handbuch der deutschen Volkskunde, Potsdam, 1934-8, pp. 57-8.
70. Fleming, 'The Renaissance Tattoo', presents an intriguing case for continuity.
71. I owe this insight to Fleming's remarks on the tattoo as inalienable property, in 'The Renaissance Tattoo'.
72. On the marking of slaves, see David Brion Davis, The Problem of Slavery in Western Culture, New York, 1966, pp. 48-52, 240, 260.
73. For suggestive accounts, see Fleming, 'The Renaissance Tattoo',
74. and Harriet Guest, 'Curiously Marked: Tattooing, Masculinity, and Nationality in Eighteenth-century British Perceptions of the South Pacific', in John Barrell (ed.), Painting and the Politics of Culture. New Essays on British Art, 1780-1850, Oxford, 1992, pp. 101-34.
75. See John Masefield (ed.), Dampier's Voyages [1697], London, 1906, pp. 494-5, 497, and Appendix, pp. 539-40.
76. Cook and Banks recorded several descriptions of tattooing in Hawaii, Tahiti, the Marquesas and New Zealand: see Cook's First Voyage (Book 1, ch. 17),
77. Second Voyage (Book II, chs. 9, 10).
78. The French explorer Bougainville had been the first European to see and describe the Tahitian 'usage of puncturing [se piquer] the skin' in his voyage of 1766-9, but this was not published until 1771, two years after the publication of Cook's First Voyage
79. (L. A. de Bougainville, Voyage autour du monde, par la frégate La Boudeuse et la Flute l'Étoile [1771], Paris, 1958, p. 142).
80. Greg Dening, Mr Bligh's Bad Language, Cambridge, 1992, pp. 35-6,
81. describes tattoos on the crew of the Bounty. The Hawaiian tattoo of Cook's time and later is discussed by Adrienne Kaeppeler, 'Hawaiian Tattoo: A Conjunction of Genealogy and Aesthetics', in Rubin (ed.), Marks of Civilization, pp. 157-70.
82. For the heavily incised New Zealand 'moko' style see Horatio G. Robley, Moko or Maori Tattooing, London, 1896.
83. The etymology of the word is discussed in Lacassagne and Magitot, 'Tatouage', p. 95:
84. Lauffer, 'Das Tatauierungswesen', pp. 2, 6;
85. Joest, Tätowiren, p. 6, discusses its transliterations and equivalents in European languages, including: English - tatau, tattaw, tattoo; French - tatau, tatouage; German - Tätowierung, tatauiren etc.; Italian - tatuaggio.
86. Joest also points to the prior existence of words in several European languages with the same meaning, mostly connoting the idea of 'puncture', e.g. the Dutch words 'prickschilderen' and 'stechmalen'. Lesson, writing in 1820, said that the 'European' term was 'piqûre' and that tattooists were called 'piqueurs' ('Du tatouage', p. 290);
87. Lauffer recorded the German term 'stempeln' in 1914, and reported another usage, 'stupfen', that had been common before 1870 (Du tatouage', op. cit., p. 7);
88. Fleming, The Renaissance Tattoo', records seventeenth-century English terms such as 'rasing', 'pinking' and 'pouncing';
89. Sinclair, 'Tattooing - Oriental and Gypsy', discusses terminology in various European and Middle Eastern languages.
90. Ernest Berchon, 'Le tatouage aux isles Marquises', Bulletins de la société de'anthropologie de Paris, 1860, p. 99.
91. Sydney Parkinson, A Journal of a Voyage to the South Seas (ed. Stanfield Parkinson), London, 1773, p. 25.
92. Gell, Wrapping in Images, p. 314.
93. Rutherford's moko tattooing is described in detail in Robley, Moko or Maori Tattooing, along with other accounts of mokoed Europeans in the nineteenth century.
94. For some contemporary accounts of this see e.g. [Signor] Saltarino, Fahrend Volk. Abnormitäten, Kuriositäten und interessante Vertreter der wandernden Künstlerwelt, Leipzig, 1895, pp. 133-8.
95. These characters attracted scientific attention too: see Dr. Kaposi [Moritz Cohn], 'Der Tätowirte von Birma', Wiener Medizinische Zeitschrift, 22: 2, January 1872, pp. 39-43, a call for further scientific study of Alexandrino;
96. and Verhandlungen der Berliner Gesellschaft für Anthropologie, Ethnologie und Urgeschichte, Berlin, 1890, pp. 304-5, for the appearance of the tattooed Texan, la belle Irène, before the august Berlin Anthropological Society.
97. Mathurin Félix Hutin, Recherches sur le tatouage, Paris, 1853.
98. The French criminal turned policeman François Vidocq had himself got tattooed by a comrade in prison in 1797, in the course of assuming an elaborate false identity; see Mémoires de Vidocq, Paris, 1828, vol. 1, pp. 272-3.
99. R. P. Lesson, 'Du tatouage chez les différens peuples de la terre', Annales maritimes et coloniales, 1820, Part II, p. 290.
100. Cf. also Pierre Rayer, Traité théorique et pratique des maladies de la peau, Paris, 2nd edn 1835, p. 611: 'In Europe, tattooing is not practised except among sailors and idle soldiers in garrisons'.
101. See A. J.-B. Parent-Duchatelet, De la prostitution dans la ville de Paris, considérée sous le rapport de l'hygiène publique, de la morale, et de l'administration, 2 vols, Paris, 1836, ch. II, 5: 'De l'habitude qu'ont certaines prostituées de s'imprimer sur le corps des figures et des inscriptions'.
102. Constraints of space do not allow me to discuss this subject fully here; see Jane Caplan, 'Educating the Eye: the Tattooed Prostitute', in Lucy Bland and Laura Doan (eds), Cultural Sexology: Labelling Bodies and Desires, 1890-1940, Cambridge, 1998, forthcoming.
103. Parent-Duchatelet, De la Prostitution, p. 119.
104. Marcel Baillot, Du détatouage. Différents procédés de destruction des tatouages, Paris, 1894, p. 12.
105. For the fashion of tattooing in England, which is usually ascribed to the example set by sea-faring members of the royal family, see Burchett, Memoirs, passim,
106. and Graven, L'argot et le tatouage des criminels, pp. 104 f. The English medico-legal expert Alfred Taylor referred without compunction to one of his tattooed relatives in the chapter on tattooing in his standard Manual of Medical Jurisprudence, 10th edn, London, 1879, p. 291.
107. See Alfred S. Taylor, 'Medico - Legal Observations on Tattoo Marks as Evidence of Personal Identity', Guy's Hospital Reports, 3rd. ser., 19, 1874, pp. 441-65 (a shorter version was incorporated in at least the earlier editions of his Manual of Medical Jurisprudence);
108. and John Baker, 'Some points connected with criminals', Journal of Mental Science, 38, July 1892, pp. 364-9:
109. 'We cannot think that tattooing has any special significance as regards criminals generally, for it is mainly found on those men who have either been soldiers or sailors' (p. 369). Also instructive is Herbert Spencer's view, in Principles of Sociology, vol. 2, London, 1879, p. 80.
110. This is the method described in Berchon, Histoire médicale du tatouage, pp. 15f; see also Rayer, Traité théorique et pratique, pp. 610-2;
111. Lesson, 'Du tatouage', pp. 290-1;
112. Hutin, Recherches, pp. 9-10;
113. Lacassagne and Magitot, Tatouage', pp. 108-9;
114. Jules Converset, Syphilis et tatouage, Lyon, 1888, pp. 11-12;
115. Charles Perrier, 'Du tatouage chez les criminels', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 12, 1897, pp. 486-7;
116. for Britain, Burchett, Memoirs;
117. for Germany/Austria, Casper, Handbuch, pp. 115-6;
118. I. Neumann, 'Das Tätowiren vom medizinischen und anthropologischen Standpunkte', Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, 34: 29, 1893, col. 1255;
119. Fritz Eller, 'Eine Vorlagebuch für Tätowierungen', Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, 19, 1905, pp. 60-7;
120. J. Jaeger, 'Tätowierungen von 150 Verbrechern, mit Personalbeschreibung', Archiv für Kriminal-Anthropologie, ibid., 21, 1905, p. 166;
121. L. Stieda, 'Etwas über Tätowierung', Wiener medizinische Wochenschrift, 61: 4, 1911, p. 895;
122. Riecke, 'Das Tatauierungswesen', pp. 8-12;
123. for Italy, Abele de Blasio, Il tatuaggio, Naples, 1905, pp. 261-3,
124. and Antonio Marro, I caratteri dei delinquenti, Turin, 1887, p. 186;
125. for Belgium, Louis Vervaeck, 'Le tatouage en Belgique', Bulletin et mémoires de la société d'Anthropologie de Bruxelles, 25, 1906;
126. for Denmark, Bergh, 'Über Tätowierungen der Prostituierten', pp. 213-4.
127. Berchon argued that tattooing was a major health risk, liable to result at best in infection, at worst in gangrene and amputation. Although he managed to persuade the French naval ministry to condemn the practice in 1861, this order was not enforced nor did Berchon convince the majority of his colleagues; see E. Berchon, 'Recherches sur le tatouage', Comptes-Rendus des séances et mémoires de la société de biologie, 3rd. ser. 3, 1861, pp. 13-37, and his Histoire médicale du tatouage.
128. For a critique of Berchon, see Paul Horteloup, 'Du tatouage', Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale, 2nd. ser., 34, 1870, pp. 440-72.
129. In Germany, according to Spamer, Die Tätowierung, p. 34.
130. J. Gouzer, 'Tatoueurs et tatoués maritimes', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 9, 1894, p. 52.
131. Alexandre Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages et principalement du tatouage chez les criminels', Annales d'hygiène publique et de médecine légale, 3rd. ser., 5, 1881, p. 303.
132. See especially Spamer, Die Tätowierung, pp. 13ff., who provides an unrivalled and fascinatingly detailed account of the organization of the tattooing trade in German port cities in the 1920s;
133. also Bellmann, 'Die Tatauierung', p. 59.
134. E. Verrier, Du tatouage en Afrique. Ses varietés, sa signification. Des survivances du tatouage en Europe, Paris, 1895, p. 3.
135. Eller, 'Ein Vorlagebuch', discusses and partially reproduces a pattern-book found on a young labourer arrested for pickpocketing in or near Mannheim in 1905.
136. Lauffer, 'Über die Geschichte und den heutigen volkstümlichen Gebrauch der Tätowierung', pp. 10-12, discusses pattern books held in the Hamburg police archive in 1914.
137. One of these, which includes many images from the nineteenth century, has been reprinted as Christian Warlich, Tätowierungen. Vorlagealbum des Königs der Tätowierer, Dortmund, 1981;
138. some nineteenth-century English and American images are reproduced in Pierced Hearts and True Love.
139. Josef Mohl, 'Mitteilungen über Tätowierungen, aufgenommen an Soldaten der Garnison Temesvár', Mitteilungen der anthropologischen Gesellschaft in Wien, 38, 1908, pp. 312-20.
140. For sources, see especially Oettermann, Zeichen auf der Haut, pp. 50-6, who discusses the influence of renaissance and baroque emblems, as well as an iconography that reworked the exotic (the South Seas) with the paradisial (Eden) and produced the familiar images of clasped hands, palm trees and entwined hearts or snakes;
141. also Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', p. 291;
142. Spamer, Die Tätowierung, pp. 59 ff.
143. For guild emblems in Germany see Johann Siebmacher, Grosse und Allgemeine Wappenbücher, 1, Nürnberg, 1898, Part 7: Berufswappen.
144. Records of twentieth-century tattooing show how rapidly images from popular culture, such as film-stars, cartoon and comic-strip characters, are absorbed into the repertoire; see especially Pierced Hearts and True Love.
145. Professor D. W. Purdy, H. T., Tattooing. How to Tattoo, What to Use and How to Use Them, London, n.d. [1896], pp. vi, 12.
146. D. W. Purdy, H. T., Tattooing. How to Tattoo, What to Use and How to Use Them, 1896], pp. vi, 12. ibid.
147. Burchett, Memoirs, p. 68.
148. Contemporary accounts include Gambier Bolton, 'Pictures on the Human Skin', Strand Magazine, 13: 76, April 1897, pp. 425-34,
149. and Burchett, Memoirs, pp. 45-52, where he describes his own 'apprenticeship' in Japan in the 1890s;
150. also Spamer, Die Tätowierung, pp. 18-20.
151. For the history of tattooing in Japan see especially W. R. van Gulik, Irezumi. The Pattern of Dermatography in Japan, Leiden, 1982;
152. and for photo-essays, Don Ed Hardy, 'Japanese Tattooing: Legacy and Essence', in Pierced Hearts and True Love, pp. 58-71,
153. and Donald Richie and Ian Buruma, The Japanese Tattoo, New York/Tokyo, 1980.
154. Spamer, Die Tätowierung, pp. 13 f. In 1886,
155. Lacassagne noted the growing popularity of tattoos and the existence 'in the majority of large French towns [of] professional tattooists', though not necessarily working from shops (Lacassagne and Magitot, 'Tatouage', p. 119).
156. Among the few references, see research carried out by the medical officer of Derby prison, communicated to Havelock Ellis, The Criminal, London, 1901, p. 193,
157. and Charles Goring's discussion in The English Convict. A Statistical Study, London, 1919 (unabridged edn), pp. 101-4, 156;
158. also Mary Gordon, Penal Discipline, London, 1922, pp. 129-43.
159. For surveys of recent research see Clive Emsley and Lewis A. Knafla, eds, Crime History and Histories of Crime. Studies in the Historiography of Crime and Criminal Justice in Modern History, Westport, Conn, 1996.
160. See David Garland, 'British Criminology before 1935', British Journal of Criminology, 28: 2, Spring 1988, pp. 1-17.
161. The most extensive research was carried out by the French physician Variot, who developed a procedure for removal by applications of tannin and silver nitrate: G. Variot and M. Morau, 'Étude microscopique et expérimentale sur quelques tatouages européens', Comptes-rendus des séances et mémoires de la société de biologie [Paris], 8th. ser., 5, 1888, pp. 9-12;
162. G. Variot, 'Nouveau procédé de destruction des tatouages', Comptes-rendus des séances et mémoires de la société de biologie ibid., pp. 636-8;
163. and G. Variot, 'Le détatouage', Revue scientifique, 3rd. ser., 17, 1889, pp. 296-300.
164. See also Berchon, Histoire médicale du tatouage;
165. Baillot, Du détatouage;
166. and Hans Gross, 'Beseitigung von Tätowirungen', in his Gesammelte kriminalistische Aufsätze, 1, Leipzig, 1902, pp. 170-1.
167. Permanence was crucial: thus Bertillon, the French pioneer of criminal anthropometry, warned that, 'The worst mistake an observer can make is to note down as indelible an identifying mark which may disappear or be effaced': Alphonse Bertillon, Instructions for Taking Descriptions for the Identification of Criminals and Others by Means of Anthropometric Indications, Chicago, 1889, p. 73.
168. These were usually in the form of tracings of designs observed on living subjects, most often criminal offenders, though tattooed fragments of skin were sometimes surgically removed from cadavers and preserved. For Lacassagne's method of collection, see his 'Tatouage', p. 134,
169. and 'Recherches sur les tatouages', pp. 289-90;
170. for observations on how to remove and preserve fragments of tattooed skin, see L. Stieda, 'Etwas über Tätowierung', Wiener Medizinischer Wochenschrift, 5: 14, April 1911, pp. 893-6.
171. Lacassagne described a case both lurid and polysemous, where the suspect in an indecent assault on two young girls bore a tattoo on his penis of a horned devil with red cheeks and lips: his identity was confirmed when his victims testified that their assailant had unbuttoned himself and said 'I'm going to show you the devil': Lacassagne and Magitot, 'Tatouage', p. 157.
172. Standard works include the frequently translated manual of criminal investigation by Hans Gross, Handbuch für Untersuchungsrichter als System der Kriminalistik, first published in Vienna in 1893;
173. and Edmond Locard, Traité de criminalistique, Lyon, 1931-4 edn, vol. 3, pp. 249-428.
174. Registers of tattoos and distinguishing marks were commonly maintained by police and prison authorities; Ellis, The Criminal, p. 194, observed that 'criminals frequently refrain from tattooing themselves because they know these marks form an easy method of recognition in the hands of the police'; and the Report . . . to inquire into the best means available for identifying habitual criminals (Troup report) noted with some irony that 'it is extraordinary how large a number of habitual criminals provide the police with an easy means of identifying themselves by names or initials tattooed on their bodies' (Cmd. 7263), P.P. 1893/4, 52, p. 10.
175. Thus Alan Sekula is right to emphasize, in his study of criminal photography, that 'The central artifact of this system [of Official intelligence'] is not the camera but the filing cabinet': not optical realism but taxonomy and data retrieval, not the photograph itself but the archive ('The Body and the Archive', p. 16).
176. Tardieu, 'Étude médico-légale sur le tatouage', a study of tattoos observed on fifty-one inmates of civilian hospitals and prisons.
177. For reworkings of this taxonomy, see e.g. Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', p. 291;
178. Louis Battut, 'Du tatouage exotique et du tatouage en Europe', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 8, 1893, pp. 91-2;
179. Charles Perrier, 'Du tatouage chez les criminels', p. 504;
180. A. Sudomir and P. Zeranskaya, 'Die Psychologie der Tätowierung bei Verbrechern', Archiv für Kriminologie, 85 August 1929, pp. 14-22.
181. Tardieu, 'Étude médico-légale', pp. 189, 173, 192.
182. Trade or professional emblems were extensively recorded and illustrated: see for example Christian Geill, 'Identification par tatouage', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 17, 1902, pp. 267-77;
183. Vervaeck, 'Le tatouage en Belgique';
184. Perrier, 'Du tatouage chez les criminels';
185. and Dr. Leppmann, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens bei Verbrecher', Vierteljahrsschrift für gerichtliche Medizin, 3rd. ser., 8, 1894, pp. 193-218.
186. Geill, 'Identification par tatouage', p. 271;
187. Leppmann, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens', p. 204;
188. see also Hutin, Recherches sur les tatouages, p. 8;
189. Casper, Handbuch der gerichtlich-medicinischen Leichen-Diagnostik, p. 119;
190. Mohl, 'Mitteilungen über Tätowierungen', p. 324;
191. and Spamer, Die Tätowierung, p. 26.
192. See Daniel Pick, Faces of Degeneration. A European Disorder c. 1848-c. 1918, Cambridge, 1989;
193. also Michel Foucault, 'About the Concept of the "Dangerous Individual" in nineteenth-century Legal Psychiatry', International Journal of Law and Psychiatry, 1: 1, 1978, pp. 1-18.
194. On the 'police gaze', see Peter Becker, 'Randgruppen im Blickfeld der Polizei. Ein Versuch über die Perspektivität des "praktischen blicks"', Archiv für Sozialgeschichte, 32, 1992, pp. 283-304.
195. Gina Lombroso-Ferrero, Criminal Man, London, 1911, pp. xiv-xv.
196. For the debate between Lombroso's 'Turin school' and Lacassagne's 'Lyon school', see Robert Nye, 'Heredity or Milieu: the Foundations of Modern European Criminological Theory', Isis, vol. 67: 238, 1976, pp. 335-55,
197. and Ruth Harris, Murders and Madness. Medicine, Law and Society in the Fin-de-siècle, Oxford, 1989, pp. 80-98.
198. For the constitution of 'criminology' as a specific field of knowledge, see Pasquale Pasquino, 'Criminology: the Birth of a Special Savoir. Transformations in Penal Theory and New Sources of Right in the Late Nineteenth Century', Ideology and Consciousness, 7, Autumn 1980, pp. 17-32;
199. also David Garland, Punishment and Welfare. A History of Penal Strategies, Aldershot, 1985, ch. 3,
200. and David Jones, History of Criminology. A Philosophical Perspective, Westport, Conn., 1986, ch. 5.
201. Thus Robert Sommer argued that one could accept that there were 'born criminals' without having to concede that 'this inherited moral abnormality expresses itself in significant morphological characteristics' (Kriminalpsychologie und strafrechtliche Psychopathologie auf naturwissenschaftlicher Grundlage, Leipzig, 1904, p. 311);
202. Gustav Aschaffenburg pointed to the existence of 'an army of criminals' who if they were not 'born criminals' were at least 'born to be criminals' (Das Verbrechen und seine Bekämpfung [1903], Heidelberg, 1923, pp. 242ff.).
203. Cesare Lombroso, 'Sul tatuaggio degli italiani', Giornale di medicina militare, 1864;
204. Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', 1881.
205. Cesare Lombroso, L'anthropologie et ses récents progrès, Paris, 1891, pp. 85, 91;
206. cf. Hans Kurella, Naturgeschichte des Verbrechers. Grundzüge der criminellen Anthropologie und Criminalpsychologie, Stuttgart, 1893: 'the uniform content, form, location, and precocity of tattoos [among criminals] point to the operation of an instinctual, autochthonous inclination that is nothing other than the legacy of an era whose organic traditions are now visible only among serious criminals, and which proves itself as such through the primeval primitiveness of its pictorially concrete illustration' (p. 112).
207. See e.g. Perrier, 'Du tatouage', p. 495;
208. Emile Laurent, Les habitués des prisons de Paris. Étude d'anthropologie et de psychologie criminelles, Lyon/Paris, 1890, introduction by Lacassagne;
209. Henri Léale, 'Criminalité et tatouage', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 24, 1909, p. 248;
210. Leppman, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens', p. 196.
211. Goring, The English Convict, pp. 101-4, subjected all Lombroso's claims to statistical tests which refuted his conclusions.
212. For a discussion of Lombroso's various attempts to classify criminals, see Marvin E. Wolfgang, 'Cesare Lombroso', in Hermann Mannheim (ed.), Pioneers of Criminology, London, 1960, pp. 182-93.
213. For summaries of the statistics compiled by the major nineteenth-century researchers, see Baer, 'Tatouage des criminels', pp. 154-6,
214. and Graven, L'argot et le tatouage, pp. 142-3.
215. As one French critic of Lombroso pointed out, 'All his observations are collected in such a manner as to minimize the number of honest men with tattoos, and to augment the number of tattooed criminals' (Léale, 'Criminalité et tatouage', p. 256).
216. As well as Léale, 'Criminalité et tatouage', p. 256). ibid.,
217. see for example Baer, 'Tatouage des criminels', pp. 160 f., 173-4;
218. Leppman, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens';
219. Louis Vervaeck, 'Le tatouage en Belgique', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 22, 1907, pp. 333-62.
220. Tardieu, 'Étude médico-légale', p. 188.
221. Lacassagne and Magitot, 'Tatouage', p. 140;
222. Lombroso, L'anthropologie et ses récents progrès, p. 83;
223. Maurice Boigey, 'Les détenus tatoués. Leur psychologie', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 25, 1910, p. 440;
224. Kurella, Naturgeschichte des Verbrechers, p. 110.
225. Heinrich Wüttke, Geschichte der Schrift, Leipzig, 1872, vol. 1: Die Entstehung der Schrift. Die verschiedene Schriftsysteme und das Schrifttum der nicht alphabetisch schreibenden Völker.
226. Lombroso, L'anthropologie criminelle, p. 94, recorded that camorristi bore tattooed identity marks according to rank; an example was the initials 'QFPM' = 'Quando finirai questa pena? Mai!' (When will this agony end? Never!);
227. see also Abele de Blasio, 'Il tatuaggio dei camorristi e delle prostitute di Napoli', Archivio di psichiatria, antropologia criminale e scienza penale (hereafter cited as Archivio di psichiatria), 15, 1894, pp. 187-204,
228. and 'Ulteriori richerche intorno al tatuaggio dei camorristi napoletani', Archivio di psichiatria, antropologia criminale e scienza penale ibid., pp. 510-29.
229. For later interpretations of tattoos as a criminal language, see Graven, L'argot et le tatouage, ch. 8,
230. and Jacques Delarue and Robert Giraud, Les tatouages du 'milieu', Paris, 1950, ch. 4.
231. Lombroso-Ferrero, Criminal Man, p. xii.
232. Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente, vol. 1, pp. 287-323
233. and Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente, vol. 2, pp. 453-61;
234. Luigi Frigerio, 'De l'épilepsie et de la folie morale dans les prisons et dans les asiles d'alienés', Actes du premier congrès international d'anthropologie criminelle, biologie et sociologie, Rome 1885, Turin, 1886/7, pp. 219-22;
235. Raffaele Gurrieri, 'Il tatuaggio nella R. Casa di Custodia per i minorenni corrigendi in Bologna', Archivio di psichiatria, 12, 1891, pp. 434-5;
236. Raffaele Gurrieri and G.B. Moraglia, 'Note sul tatuaggio osceno nei delinquenti', Archivio di psichiatria 13, 1892, pp. 145-51.
237. Careful positioning allowed the body itself to participate in a sort of rebus: for example, the sentence 'Venez mesdames au robinet d'amour' (Ladies, come to the spigot of love) placed between navel and pubes, or the policeman chasing a mouse's tail into the anus; for other such examples, see Silvio Armando Neri, 'Tatuaggio osceno in fratelli criminali', Archivio di psichiatria, 23, 1902, pp. 252-3;
238. for contemporary versions, Scutt and Gotch, Art, Sex and Symbol, passim.
239. Kurella, Naturgeschichte des Verbrechers, pp. 111, 109.
240. Lacassagne and Magitot, 'Tatouage', pp. 159, 210, 140.
241. Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', p. 301.
242. Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', p. 301. Ibid.; Lacassagne found 89 flower images, 79 of them pansies.
243. Laurent, Les habitués des prisons, p. 521.
244. i.e. 'Death to unfaithful women', 'Child of ill-fortune', 'No chance', 'The past has deceived me, the present torments me, the future terrifies me', 'Long live anarchy', 'I swear to revenge myself', 'Revenge is sweet', 'Learn to suffer without complaint', 'Everything is in God's hands'. For these and other examples, see Lacassagne, 'Recherches sur les tatouages', p. 299;
245. Lombroso, L'uomo delinquente, vol. 1, pp. 286-323;
246. Battut, 'Du tatouage exotique', pp. 91-2;
247. Perrier, 'Du tatouage chez les criminels', pp. 532 ff.;
248. Leppmann, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens';
249. Stieda, 'Etwas über Tätowierung', p. 895.
250. Laurent, Les habitués des prisons, p. 510.
251. Leppmann, 'Die criminalpsychologische und criminalpraktische Bedeutung des Tätowirens', pp. 214 f. This research also suggested that the most likely offenders to be tattooed were not the worst or most recidivist, but the workshy and vagabonds who committed minor crimes of opportunity against property: men who had time on their hands, and whose vagrant and exposed life hardened their skin and enabled them better to tolerate pain.
252. Etienne Martin, 'Le tatouage chez les enfants', Archives d'anthropologie criminelle, 25, 1910, pp. 75-87;
253. Baer, 'Tatouage des criminels', p. 166;
254. Oliphant Smeaton, 'Tattooing and its History', Westminster Review, March 1898, pp. 320-3.
255. Baer, 'Tatouage des criminels', p. 171,
256. and Horteloup, 'Du tatouage', p. 471.
257. Léale, 'Criminalité et tatouage', p. 265.
258. Vervaeck, 'Le tatouage en Belgique'; see also his longer version under the same title in the Bulletin et mémoires de la société d'anthropologie de Bruxelles, 25, 1906.
259. Vervaeck, 'Le tatouage en Belgique', pp. 357-8.
260. See Catherine Crawford, 'Legalizing Medicine: Early Modern Legal Systems and the Growth of Medico-Legal Knowledge', in Michael Clark and Catherine Crawford (eds), Legal Medicine in History, Cambridge, 1994, pp. 89-116,
261. and Carol A. G. Jones, Expert Witnesses. Science, Medicine, and the Practice of Law, Oxford, 1994.
262. In a more recent echo of the same idea, the tattoo has been described as 'a sort of graphic argot . . . [T]he rigorous if unwritten classification of these designs forbids any excessive play of the imagination because of the risk of their not being understood by those to whom they are addressed': Jacques Delarue, 'Florescence and Decadence of the Tattooist's Art', Graphis, 7, 1951, p. 191.
263. On secret languages, see Hans Gross, Criminal Investigation. A Practical Handbook, London, 3rd edn, 1934, pp. 221-41;
264. Herbert Streicher 'Zinken', in Alexander Elster and Heinrich Hagemann (eds), Handwörterbuch der Kriminologie, Berlin/Leipzig, 1936, pp. 1154-6.
265. On graffiti, Cesare Lombroso, Palimsesti del carcere, Turin, 1891;
266. Gurrieri and Moraglia, 'Note sul tatuaggio osceno nei delinquenti', p. 145;
267. plates in Charles Perrier, Les criminels, Lyon/Paris, 1900;
268. and Hans Prinzhorn, Bildnerei der Gefangenen. Studie zur bildnerischen Gestaltung Ungeübter, Berlin, 1926.
269. Cf. Michel Thévoz's suggestive point, in Le corps peint, Geneva, 1984, p. 82, that the tattoo inspires unease because it releases images from the safety of the frame, and because of the contradiction between its 'iconographic rigidity' and the 'elasticity of its support' (i.e. the skin).
270. Guest, 'Curiously Marked', p. 102.
271. That this marginality expresses something peculiar to the tattoo as such is a frequent argument: see e.g. Gell, Wrapping In Images;
272. Guest, 'Curiously Marked';
273. and Fleming, 'The Renaissance Tattoo'.